Slashdot Mirror
Big Rigs Go High Tech
pottercw writes "Trucking may not seem like a high-tech industry to the casual observer, but major carriers are starting to adopt an array of emerging technologies to combat rising fuel costs, tighter regulation and fierce competition. The technologies include systems that monitor and communicate vehicle conditions and performance, enhanced GPSs that keep tabs on tractors and trailers, and safety systems which issue warnings or even take action to help drivers avoid an accident — all working in real time. Computerworld has a cool mouseover diagram highlighting some of the gadgets we're beginning to see on high-tech trucks."
Once everyone finds out that the Semi Trucks drive themselves, the truckers' union will overthrow society!
Slashdot really needs to get with the times. The Navitron Autodrive System is nearly ten year-old news, though remains a little known secret known to many truckers falling asleep at the wheel.
If only it could have saved poor Red from beef poisoning at Sirloin A Lot, sadly that feature was still in beta.
-Matt
viva Homer!
--- Need web hosting?
Who read the title and thought "OH NO, A SEQUEL!?"
No... and it doesn't help the transportation industry one bit that transportation costs are approaching a threshold where locally produced goods can compete.
/me stands by for the screams about cartels and oil company profits.
For generations, moving goods around has been treated as nothing but a small marginal cost. This means we have been able to take for granted the origin of goods.
Of course the fact is, margins still allow us to take it for granted, and they still would, even with a doubling of the current prices of fuel. Fuel does not yet dominate the cost of transportation, and the cost of transportation does not yet dominate the the cost of agricultural commodities.
But, don't listen to me. Listen to the voices that really want you to be angry about fuel prices. Maybe there really is some conspiracy driving up the prices (while staying hidden within the competitive, transparent marketplace where the value is established, and where the prices can only be explained by investor behavior, since the only other factors of supply, demand, and reserves do not explain it.)
Oh, that's scarier than any boogeyman can possibly be: what if the market really does bear $136/bbl crude, without any nefarious or criminal interference in the market?
Well, it's the only commodity that has a scoreboard on every corner, and the only one where people honestly expect me to get upset about it, to make it a priority.
Tell you what: When fuel reaches 1% of my annual budget, I'll give it a line item. When fuel reaches a level that it is a significant marginal cost in delivering goods to retail marketplaces, I'll buy locally produced goods. Local economy will be happy.
If you have experience in commodities or degrees in economics, you might be able to persade me.
I've been called clueless for my opinions. I do happen to know a thing or two about the transportation business, particularly trucking, particularly in the ag sector.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
And yet the emissions are still way, way worse than they would be for transport by rail.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Back in '91, IBM won a contract from J.B. Hunt to develop a satellite based system for trucks. It used a Qualcomm satellite system, a 486SX based tablet computer (I designed the keyboard controller, power management processor and did a lot of the BIOS work on it), and a docking station.
:)
The tablet ran a program designed by a sub-contractor that allowed the trucker to do things like checklists, fuel management, figure his trip earnings, report emergencies, etc.
One of J.B. Hunts driving (heh) reasons was that after a driver delivered his load, he might spend 30 minutes thumbing the same quarter into a payphone trying to call the dispatcher. With this system, he could send a communique that he was done, and the system would turn around with new orders in less than 2 minutes.
One of the other neat things was the Qualcomm dish could do triangulation that was accurate to a few hundred yards. At least twice I know of, rigs were stolen and recovered because of the satellite tracking.
Now the little antenna packages are ubiquitous on trucks. Look behind the air dam on the roof, or the back of the cab, and you'll see a white dome that's about 12" in diameter, and 10" tall. Odds are that's a Qualcomm satellite link.
The tablet system was pretty neat, too. It was an extremely dense PCB at the time, 16 layers. It supported the original Sundisk (before they became Sandisk) 2.5MB flash drives, touch screen, used Peltier devices to allow operation in extreme temperatures, had RS-232, RS-422, infrared, keyboard & mouse port, expansion connectors, LCD controller, all that stuff, in an aluminum frame with this heavy duty rubber covering over it.
The holster interfaced to the trucks wiring harness and could pick off speed (we were pre-GPS), RPM, voltage, stuff like that. Our group didn't handle the holster, so I only know vague details about it, but I do know that while they were considered some of the vehicle data busses for the future, they interfaced the old-fashioned way.
Most of the drivers were moderately receptive to the system, since it sped up their turn-around time, which meant more money. However, since it could tattle on exceeding maximum allowed drive time, over-revving, and of course speeding, there were some drivers that had real problems with it.
Incidentally, at that point in time, J.B. Hunt was a VERY large customer of IBM main frames. For the previous 7 years, they upgraded every year to IBMs newest mainframe offerings. Their big data center was somewhere in the Mid-west, I believe. With their route planning, logistics management, service records system, dispatch system and everything else, they burned a lot of CPU cycles.
Somewhere in my basement, I have one of the docking holsters and the tablet computer, and as of about a year ago, it powered up and booted into DOS.
J.B. Hunt and IBM learned an important lesson from this, too: Don't let the driver be able to see the tablet. Before they started positioning them where the driver couldn't read it while in motion, at least one accident occurred because of fixation.
While new technologies have brought more to the table, what the system offered 17 years ago isn't all that drastically different. Satellite is still the best choice, since cell phone coverage is not 100% pervasive.
The project name was Road Rider. Naturally, we called it Road Kill internally
Once everyone finds out that the Semi Trucks drive themselves...
:-)
Most people who have only ever driven cars fail to appreciate that driving heavy trucks is actually quite a demanding job, and not one for dummies. Those rigs are expensive, and no factor that saves fuel or wear and tear can be neglected. It may be popular to label truckies as ignorant yokels, but it is a fact that they need to be quite technically astute. For instance, tyre wear alone is a huge factor when you consider the cost of replacing over 40 tyres on a multi-combination rig.
As an aside, this reminds me of one time back in my trucking days, some idiot tried to steal my rig. He might have thought he was a shit-hot car driver, but couldn't even muster the coordination required to get the crash box into gear. He was still struggling with it when the police arrived...
We'd see a lot more aerodynamics.
Aero? Peterbilt 378, Kenworth T2000, International Prostar, Freightliner Century/Colombia/Cascadia, Mack Vision. And more are to follow.
It'd be so easy to make a few small aerodynamic changes to the trailers. That's seriously low hanging fruit, and it's been almost entirely ignored.
Aero Trailers are not always feasible in the eyes of the trucking industry for one simple reason: weight. Most tractors today have proper wind deflectors on top to allow to the air to deflect around the trailer reducing drag. Side skirts have been tried since the 70's but did not yield enough of an increase in fuel savings to warrant their cost or added weight.
We'd also see lighter trailers with more aluminum and composite carbon fiber in them
Trailers are already as light as possible and are full of composite materials and aluminum, you just haven't bothered to look. Aluminum is popular in flatbed trailers that can be upward of 100% aluminum and many trailers are of a mixed construction of both aluminum and steel. Aluminum frames used to be popular in trucks of the 70's. But after a few years of running on roads that are salted in the winter, everyone learned real fast that aluminum was a poor material for frames. Carbon fiber isn't a material your going to find on a truck as it has no desirable properties other then low weight.
more efficient engines
Diesel engines have for years been very efficient. The average today is about 6-6.5 MPG for tractor trailers. Older diesels that were mechanical could also yield similar numbers but were very dirty (but fun and simple to maintain and work on). EPA 2007 and the looming EPA 2010 has created a whole new school of diesel design and many companies are about to or are going to release some real seriously high tech engines. Compacted graphite iron, turbo compounding, ingenious heat management, acoustic tuning, over head cams and integrated engine brakes is whats in the mix. International's MaXXForce, Detroit Diesel's DD15, and Paccar's MX engine are some of the most technologically advanced engines out there. They are ready to be deployed soon here in the USA and will meet EPA 2010 emissions which will make gasoline engine look filthy.
and better tires.
Ever hear of super singles? They are wide base tires that replace the dual tires found on both drive and trailer axles. They have less friction than a set of dual tires and can bring about a noticeable and beneficial savings in fuel economy. They are also lighter which allows the truck to carry more fright which increases efficiency. Adoption has been pretty good but safety is a bit of a concern as with duals if one tire blows the other can support the weight of the axle so the truck can be safely stopped. Cost is also an issue and they aren't useful outside of LTL, long haul and bulk haul. Vocational work still demands dual tires for the high weights and abuse involved.
My father is a life long trucker, and when I was younger I went with him on several trips, learning the business.
Most trucking companies with their own trucks have regulators in them with limit the speed to California highway spec for semis(I think 55). Swift is the biggest one I can think of that does this. These companies generally charge per-hour or trip, and not per hour, which also minimizes speed. They also have pretty good safety enforcement, and trip monitoring. The ones to worry about are the independent contractors. They are paid per mile, or make money based on the speed of their delivery, thus have an incentive to speed, and be reckless. They also have far less safety and maintenance requirements than corporate drivers.
The margins in modern trucking are pretty damn slim, so sometimes people cut corners.
If you want to be afraid, just wait until the foreign trucking provisions of NAFTA come through, and we're flooded with Mexican truckers, driving Mexican trucks, completely immune to American safety, and EPA standards, much less CDL standards.
Most of my "bad trucker" experiences were due to morons in cars acting recklessly. People don't realize that trucks have a MASSIVE stopping distance, miles of blindspots, and the empty trailers REALLY suck. I see so many people change lanes 10ft in front of trucks going 75mph, thinking it is safe. Sometimes I hope that something terrible happens, just so I can feel good about Darwin.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Your thinking of those vertical, high population density cities on the east coast right?
My city is 550 square miles, not counting the suburbs (around 9000 square miles, including the full metropolitan area), and has around 2000 people per square mile. Compare to New York city, with 300 or so square miles, with TWICE the population (27,282 per square mile, more and an order of magnitude larger).
Most cities in the west are huge sprawling behemoths. Even with public transportation, it still would add around an hour to the average commute, or more. Sadly, Phoenix doesn't even really have that. Our bus service is spotty, infrequent, and unreliable, and barely covers most of the central part of the city, much less the outskirts.
We also have the same problems as other cities, the closer to the city center (thus jobs) you are, you either have to cope with high prices, or nasty ghetto. The only middle-class compromise is to move further and further out, thus increasing trip times, and eliminated public transit as a viable, and timely option. Statistically, only 3% of people in Pheonix use public transit to commute, while 72% drive their own cars to work.
There is much more to the US than the east coast.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey